‘I am not afraid; I was merely thinking of the sad story of this place,’ said Ethel with a shudder that she could not repress. And passing over the boulders of loose rock, they entered Indian file into the Hunger Hole.
Ethel, on following her young pupil through the darkling portal of the cave, moved forward at first with extreme precaution; but gradually, as her eyes became accustomed to the dim mysterious light that reigned within, she could distinguish that the grotto really did increase in height within two paces of the entrance, and that it was quite possible to stand upright without inconvenience beneath the rocky roof. She saw that she was in a natural cavern of small dimensions, the irregular level of the floor being moistened by the water that oozed through a crevice between two mossy stones and trickled onwards until it fell, with a monotonous dripping sound, into a chasm some ten or eleven feet in breadth, over which a wooden bridge, the timbers of which were black with age and coated with colourless growths of fungi and mosses, afforded the means of passing.
‘They say the Hunger Hole was known and used from very early times,’ observed Lady Alice, stepping fearlessly upon the dilapidated bridge, of which the hand-rails, if such there had been, had long since rotted away. ‘But its very existence was kept secret by the Morfords of Morford and two or three other families of the neighbouring gentry and their trusty retainers, until after that sad tragedy of which I told you. You will find the inner chamber more comfortable than the outer cave, where the spring is.’
And indeed Ethel found herself in a recess, somewhat smaller than the exterior portion of the cavern, but dry, and free alike from trickling moisture and the unwholesome growth of cryptogams, that carpeted the slimy floor of the antechamber through which they had passed. At one extremity of the chamber a sort of bench or bed-place had been cut, evidently by human agency, in the stony wall. Light came filtered down through boughs and creeping-plants from above the chasm, where a glimpse of the sky might be caught; while beneath, some subterranean pool or streamlet, to judge by the drip, drip, of the water that ran over the mossy lip of the fissure, certainly existed.